EXPERT FACULTY

The Professor: Tom Klinkowstein
The Course: Projects in Transnational Design

The Museum of Modern Art recently acquired a poster that Communications Design Adjunct Professor Tom Klinkowstein designed in the 1980s as a promotion for an upcoming Laurie Anderson concert. With its paste-up look, the poster is a time capsule for the era.

Around the same time the poster was created, Klinkowstein was doing performance art alongside his print work. A Trekkie of sorts, his work has always been informed by the futuristic. As part of a night club act he did at the Mazzo Club in Amsterdam while teaching in Holland, he would send faxes—then cutting edge technology—to fellow artist Bob Adrian at the Blitz Bar in Vienna. Collectively these faxes would form a puzzle, creating the logo for McDonald’s for one show. At a time when the golden arches weren’t ubiquitous worldwide the sight of them made Klinkowstein’s audience in the Netherlands recoil.

Klinkowstein is currently teaching “Projects in Transnational Design” (Special Projects, DES658) in collaboration with a graduate course at AKV St. Joost in Breda, Holland, the very school he taught at thirty years prior. Last month, he presented their trans-Atlantic project for the American Institute for Graphic Arts (AIGA) Geographics conference in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Text and Production: Bay Brown
Video and Production: Peter Tannenbaum